Recent reviews by biostudent

L4D in WHFB setting. Tthat's a rather superficial descriiption. There are different characters with different abilities, a loot system, and leveling up. Solo played and it's okay, but I'd imagine this would be a lot more entertaining with some friends.

0.4 hours on record because I could not bear to play any longer than that. I find myself agreeing with most of the negative reviews, the game just feels broken or unfinished. A lot of games of similar look allow your character to fight in whatever direction they are facing, this game limits your attacks to left or right. This has a very limiting effect on tactics.

Is your home a total mess? Would you rather play video games instead of clean up? Well here's a fun compromise. You can clean up a total mess of a place in a video game. So next time your OCD s/o gets all miffed about your flat resembling something from hoarders, you can play this and feel like you've accomplished something.

Verdun is a multiplayer squad based FPS set in World War 1 on the western front.

You have specialised roles with differeing equipment available, but at the end fo the day, you're an easily punctured blood bag. You need to make good use of cover and squad tactics to survive as you make your way across the field. Once you are in the same area as the enemy, the fighting gets brutal and deadly. Close quarters combat in trenches and tunnels just accelerates the rate at which your fleshy blood bag dies and requires a respawn. Again, staying close to squadmates helps as they are basically mobile cover, unless someone throws a grenade, then you're all pretty much dead.

Aiming is mostly iron sights. Sharpshooters have scopes avaialble. If you manage to hit someone, you generally kill them.

My experience has been like this:

Spawn. Follow NCO around as he gives order to attack. Stop. Watch squadmate look over trench . Squadmate gets shot and falls dead. NCO charges over trench. Follow. NCO manages to get to cover. Run toward cover. Get shot. Die.

Respawn. Follow NCO. Stick to trenches. Round corner, get shot up by a squad of enemies. Die.

Respawn. Ditch NCO. Creep around trenches. Peek up over trench. Get shot. Die.

Respawn. Follow NCO. Get to attack point. Find cover. NCO and squadmates die. Hide. See enemy. Shoot. Miss. Cycle the bolt to reload. Enemy shoots. Misses. Shoot again. Kill enemy before he can shoot again. JOY! Get shot by his squadmate. Die.

Just as in history books, it goes back and forth, dying to take control of small section, and once your side has prevailed, you must defend it, and sometimes lose it and try to take it back again.

If you need to watch a show to get in the mood, watch Our Wolrd War. It was a series by the BBC.

I did a play through and stuck to one character for the most part, Sideswipe.

You play as the Autobots as they try to protect the Earth from a devious plan of Megatron's.

What did I like?

It felt like and an authentic revival of the 80s cartoon. Cel shaded graphics combined with nice models that looked like the original cartoons, gave the characters a vintage feel without the baggage of actual vintage style (such as inconsistencies in art). They also utilized some of the original voice actors! Really that was such a vital part for immersion.

The story felt like it could have fit into a multi-episode arc of the original series. Again, adding to the depth of the experience.

Scattered along the maps are various data files. These were nice collectibles that helped fill in the back story.

It felt like the teams involved really appreciated and respected the IP.

Gameplay is similar to Dynasty Warriors Gundam. You pick a character, run around the map, beat up bad guys, collect gear, improve stats, go to base, improve gear, learn new moves, create new abilities.

As you play you also unlock other game modes. They're like challenge arenas where you can earn new gear and experience to improve stats.

There is DLC available as well. Mostly skins and weapons.

The game is short. 6 levels. In those 6 levels you meet a good number of old favorites from the series.

Controls with a gamepad are easy enough. Move, jump,light attack, heavy attack, transform, evade, and aim. You can chain attacks for interesting combos that involve transforming, which is pretty cool. If you want to run, you will need to transform.

Overall pretty fun game but a bit short for the main story campaign. On the other hand there were still challenge missions to complete and collectibles to find.

It was fun when it first came out. Recommend a gamepad controller. However, the game is no longer sold/supported, so recommending is not really useful. They put out a new edition that includes all the DLC. Would be nice if they offered a discount for those of us that own the old version. I'm not saying give us the game for free. But if they aren't going to make the DLC compatible with this older version, then Whiskey Tango Foxtrot you greedy bastards. I'd buy the DLC if I could, but no, the publishers decided, oh old version, let's break that and force users to pay for something they already have so they can buy more stuff they don't have. Boo, not recommended.

Again, I have to say Steam needs a "meh" recommendation.

Basically this is like Sudoku.

It's very casual and you can grind out all the achievements by just playing through the levels. That's nice. No odd crazy/rely on random chance achiements to unlock.

On the other hand, at some point I found myself just getting a bit bored.

I wanted to like this game. The story sounded pretty cool. I think this could have made a great graphic novel. As a game, well this particular iteration is a bit lacking. Combat is repetitive and gets quite boring. I found myself running around talking to everyone to learn more about the game world and story but getting bored with the grind of combat. After awhile I just didn't enjoy playing anymore so despite the developing story I had to quit before finishing the game. Graphics were not bad but again nothing spectacular. I suppose my most constructive critique is that I feels like the writer has an awesome story to tell, I could see the seeds there, but there was some sort of failure in translation. The ideas start off so great in their mind but when it is transcribed to a game it feels like parts, and probably important ones, were left out due to time constraints and technical limitations. Hopefulthis gives the devs the encouragement to keep at it and realize their vision and maybe branch out and put together a graphic novel.

The sequel to X-com UFO defense felt a lot like a re-skinning of the orirginal. Was this a bad thing? Not really. The first one was so good they didn't really bother to fix something that wasn't broken. Add in a modified story and appropriate changes (basically swicth the empahsis to underwater/aquatic theme) and create larger alien bases. Pretty cool. The one gripe is that sometimes the last weak alien will play hide and seek in their base, dragging out an otherwise finished mission.

This game helped set my standard for PC games. It has depth, it has a story, it is challenging, and it requires multiple skill sets. It combines base building, research, and resource management for the world/organization level, and turn based tactical combat at the squad level.